{"id":3846,"date":"2020-12-07T10:23:13","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T10:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myramidnight.com\/journal\/?p=3846"},"modified":"2026-05-05T11:43:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:43:23","slug":"first-time-vps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myramidnight.com\/journal\/?p=3846","title":{"rendered":"First time VPS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have had a shared hosing for many years now, but over the years I have learned how restricting it can be for a web developer that wants to try something other than static websites.<\/p>\n

After realizing how much the hosting would cost me compared to how little I made use of all the unlimited space and limits, I figured I would try my hand at keeping a Virtual Private Server, because it was cheaper by a lot, partly because you would be on your own to manage it, the hosting provider would not assist you.<\/p>\n

Didn't seem too intimidating anymore after learning web development and still learning Computer Science at the Reykjavik University. It's just a remote computer, right? I have played with using localhost alot for projects, setting up databases, servers... and a VPS is basically the same idea, just strictly bound to the terminal CLI. <\/p>\n

It was suggested that I would just buy the smallest VPS package and see how well I would manage to transfer all the contents from the shared hosting service to the VPS (still the same provider, which made this simpler). I was even told that if I then canceled my shared hosting, the remaining money I had payed to keep it up for the year could be transferred to pay for the VPS. Sounded like a good deal to me.<\/p>\n

So that's how I got my Ubuntu server up and running! And in hindsight I think things went quite smoothly, managed to find very good guides online by DigitalOcean about VPS and various setups.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Set up the Apache server<\/li>\n
  2. Add the PHP<\/li>\n
  3. Add the database (went with MariaDB)<\/li>\n
  4. Get the phpMyAdmin up and running<\/li>\n
  5. Figure out how to increase the upload limit in PHP to import the SQL files.<\/li>\n
  6. Migrate the websites one by one, just changing the directory of the default site to the directory I was setting up each time so I could see it on the ip in browser.<\/li>\n
  7. Create the configuration files for the VirtualHost on the Apache server via ftp, so the domains will know where to connect.<\/li>\n
  8. Direct my domains to the new server, wait for that to connect.<\/li>\n
  9. Using the Certbot to get SSL certificates easy (many thanks to https:\/\/letsencrypt.org\/ for the free safety). Got https now!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You are now a proud webmaster of a Apache server!<\/p>\n

    I was migrating a WordPress installation, Piwigo gallery, MediaWiki and a php website I made from scratch about guineapigs! The main things I ran into was the upload limit issue when I was trying to import the SQL exports, in the end I installed the PHP-FPM, and then things finally started happening.<\/p>\n

    Now the only thing I haven't figured out yet is how to be able to use the permalink rewrites for the WordPress, because if I use anything but the plain links, then I get 404 errors. Not a big deal, but it took me a moment to realize what the issue was because I was using custom permalinks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I have had a shared hosing for many years now, but over the years I have learned how restricting it can be for a web developer that wants to try something other than static websites. After realizing how much the hosting would cost me compared to how little I made use of all the unlimited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[173,175,172,174,176,171],"class_list":["post-3846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-web-stuff","tag-apache","tag-database","tag-hosting","tag-server","tag-ssl","tag-vps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myramidnight.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myramidnight.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myramidnight.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myramidnight.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myramidnight.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3846"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/myramidnight.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4105,"href":"https:\/\/myramidnight.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3846\/revisions\/4105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myramidnight.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myramidnight.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myramidnight.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}